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The $100 MBA Show
MBA2275 5 Sales Strategies That Don't Scale
00:20:33
A personal touch can set your business apart — even when there’s no chance you’ll be able to do it for everyone. So why do new businesses avoid strategies that don’t scale…even while they’re still small?
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Omar Zenhom
Foreign. Welcome to the $100 MBA show. Because a better you equals a better business. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's lesson, you will learn five sales strategies that don't scale. Now, I want to say right off the bat that just because these strategies don't scale doesn't mean you shouldn't do them. In fact, I actually highly recommend you do them, especially as you're starting to get traction in your business. You see, things that don't scale are less competitive. Everybody's trying to find a shortcut, a hack, a silver bullet. They're trying to find the easy way to do anything they want to go big or go home. But. But the fact of the matter is, most people don't want to roll up their sleeves and do the things that just don't scale. This makes it easier for you to get results because less people are doing it. And in a lot of ways, these strategies are a lot more reliable to get you results. It's like walking to the gym or taking the car. Yeah, you can take the car and it'll be faster. Maybe you'll cut the time in half or one third depending how far the gym is. But your car might break down, there might be traffic, you might not be able to find parking. So therefore it's taking you longer to get in the gym. When you walk, you have a little bit more control. Yeah, it's not the most efficient way, but it's the most reliable way. And when you're getting started and when you need sales to run your business and to grow, you need a reliable way to bring in new customers. And this is why I highly recommend these five strategies. Every single one of them. I've tried them myself and I'll share with you the results. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. This episode is sponsored by Time Doctor. Measure and improve productivity wherever your people work. If you've been following along, we teamed up with Time Doctor to install and integrate Time Doctor in our own business. We wanted to see how it could help our whole team improve productivity wherever they are in the world. You see, Time Doctor gives you a detailed up to minute picture of you and your team so that you can manage productivity, engagement and staff attrition in your business. This allows you to have total Peace of mind. Follow along on our journey of integrating Time Doctor in our business. See how it's all going after we've installed Time Doctor and the team's been using it. And you can join in on the experiment as well. Join Time Doctor today by starting a free trial and achieve up to 30% more productivity and unlock the power of visibility and accountability in your business. Visit the Time Doctor website at www.timedoctor.com to to get started again. That's timedoctor.com let's get real for a second. When it comes to sales, a lot of people just feel uncomfortable. They know they have to sell their product and service. They know that's how they make money and bring in customers and grow their business. But for many people, it's a painful process. Talking to people, selling, highlighting the benefits and features of your offering. And this is why a lot of people say, hey, if I have to do this, I want to do this at scale so I don't have to exert too much energy or time. The thing is that when you're starting out or even when you're not starting out, when you're just desperate for sales, the at scale method, it's risky. It doesn't always work. And even when it does work, sometimes the actual clients that you close haven't built that relationship with you long enough to stick around. That's why I want to share with you these five sales strategies that don't scale but are high quality, that increase the likelihood of closing sales, of making customers say yes and getting them to buy your products or services. Now, I want to say off the bat, because my product, my business is B2B. A lot of these strategies are focused on business to business sales, but many of them will still work for B2C. Business to consumer. Let's start with the first one, and that's sales calls. Yep. That means getting on the phone or getting on a video call on your computer and having a discussion, having a conversation with a potential customer to learn about what their needs are and show how your product or service can address those needs. Now, there's a whole system to this. Obviously you can't just pick up the phone and call somebody randomly. You need to attract leads, you need to email them, you need to make appointments. And in this process, the most important thing you need to focus on is appointments booked. You want to book as many appointments possible. This gives you enough at bats, enough tries for you to close a sale. So for example, if you have five calls booked for the week, that's not as good as having 20 calls booked for the week, because with 20 calls, you're giving yourself enough chances to close more and more sales. With five, let's say, for example, for every six people you speak to close a sale, you might not get any sales. Okay, with five calls, but with 20, you might close three or four, giving you momentum, giving you an idea of what works on these calls so that you can continue to do them. What I love about sales calls is it allows you to refine your pitch. It allows you to really understand the language customers use, the problems they're facing. You'll start seeing patterns and you'll start adjusting your demo or your conversation so that your health helping them make a decision to go with you. I spoke to a lot of founders. In fact, I sat down with Nathan Barry, the founder of ConvertKit, one of the most popular email marketing platforms out there. And we're going to be airing that conversation very soon here on the podcast. But he shares in that conversation that this is how he got started with convertkit. He just made sales calls over and over and tried to close clients. And he was not trying to close big deals. He was just looking even just a monthly plan. But the point he was trying to make is that I needed enough reps to know what works. And then once I have that down, I'm closing clients left and right. I have some money coming in now. I can think about scaling the system and maybe using this refined pitch in a webinar. But sales calls is a great exercise and it allows you to get comfortable talking about your product, talking about what you can offer, learning from your customers. It's basically free R and D because you can record these calls, you can learn from them, you can use the same language that customers are using in your marketing and your sales and your emails. It's really a goldmine of information and a great experience for you to get some initial traction. When I started Webinar Ninja, I did a lot of this. Getting on calls, doing presentations online, getting my ideal customers that I know that, hey, if these guys love my product, then I'm gonna have no problem selling to the masses. So glad I did it. In fact, from time to time, I still like to do it. I have some calls scheduled this next month because I want to get back into the market and learn from my customers and close some sales myself. Strategy number two, Speak at events. I've carved out kind of a mini career on the side as a public speaker. Now, when you speak at an event, depending on the size of the event. This allows you to get on stage, be an authority, and influence a good number of people. Now, some events are big, some events are small. I've spoken in front of crowds of 50 to 100 to 2000 and beyond. But what speaking at events does is that it allows you again, to be presented as an authority automatically by you being on stage and them watching you on stage and seeing you as one of the speakers on the event program, they automatically see you as somebody that knows more than them, somebody that actually is an authority, somebody they can trust, somebody that actually might be able to help them in some way. So this allows you to kind of have a head start in the relationship. And if you knock it out of the park and you have a great speech on stage, people are going to be even more intrigued about you and going to want to come and speak to you after you speak during the event, during the cocktail hour, during the dinners. This is why I say to people, if you're going to invest in this way of sales, when you go to an event, clear a calendar. This is the time for you to make relationships, have great conversations, and talk about what you do. Listen. Entrepreneurship is a small world, and if you go to enough of these events, you become a household name. I know because I've done it. I would speak at multiple events a month. And remember, when you speak at these events, people advertise these events. The organizers of this event advertise these events on social media. They see your face on the screen, your name, so you become a thought leader. And every conversation in this event is a form of a sales conversation because you're selling yourself, you're selling your authority, you're selling what you do and what you offer. Now, obviously, you're not going to try to close the sale and say, hey, thanks for watching my speech. Would you like to sign up for my program? And most events won't allow you to sell on stage. What I'm saying here is that you're building an enormous amount of trust by being there in person or even if this event is online. And it's an incredible branding exercise so that they can check you out, go to your website and go through your sales funnel, whatever that might be. But having said that, I've had conversations where people signed up immediately after talking to them at an event. If you want to get started with this, you can do what I did. Make it easy on the event organizer to get a few speeches under your belt when you're getting started, meaning, I'll speak for free. I'LL pay my way. I'll pay my hotel. This is what I did when I got started. And I'll deliver and I'll even send them a video of me giving a webinar, giving a talk, or doing a video on YouTube and show that, hey, I can deliver great content. For most events, they'll find a spot for you if you have contacted them early enough because it's no cost to them and it seems like you're going to add a lot of value and especially if you help them by marketing the event on your own social media or to your audience. I did this about three to four to maybe even five times when I first got started. I recorded every single speech. I created myself a speaker reel and then I was ready to go. Now I was being asked to come speak at events because people heard about what a great performance or a great speech I gave. And now I even get paid to speak at these events. So my advice, just get started. Third, sales strategy. Sales by chat and specifically messenger or WhatsApp. This is basically like a sales call, but via chat. There are so many ways you could do this. Some people on Facebook, what they do is they create a Facebook group. They have a thriving group, they add content, they help people out, and then they DM people inside that group to try to close a sale to see if they can help out. The most common way to do this is, let's say you post a training video in your group. You tell people in the comments, hey, would you like a worksheet to go with this training? Let me know. I can DM you. You then direct message them on messenger and say, hey, here's the worksheet. Let me know how it goes. And then you follow up the next day, hey, how did that training go? Can I help you in any way? What are you struggling with? And that starts the sales conversation via chat. What's great about this is that it's asynchronous. You don't actually have to align time zones and all that kind of stuff to make sure that you're on an appointment or a call and allows people to ask freely their questions via direct message. Now, I've done this without a Facebook group. I would just direct message people that happen to be my Facebook friends, ask them some questions about what their needs are and if I can help them in any way. Now, remember, this is a very slow process, but it's actually a really good way to build a relationship with somebody and be top of mind. And I say slow process, but sometimes the Close is very fast. People are ready and they're ready to buy and they like you and they're like, okay, tell me where to sign up. What I love about it is that it's non confrontational and you can do it anytime. Whenever you have a free moment or a couple minutes in the morning, you can really allow it to fit in your own schedule. Fourth strategy. Networking events, dinners, meetups. You're not on stage. This is not a conference. This is more like there's a party happening at your coworking space. Like a Halloween party somebody's running. A dinner for entrepreneurs, even a poker night. That's happening with like minded entrepreneurs. Why do I say this? Because, yes, this doesn't scale. Yes, this is very small groups, but people buy from people. And when you build relationships with people and you make it a priority for you to network, to meet people, to be a friend, to make friends, you're top of mind. And when they learn about what you do, they always put your business into context. Oh, I know somebody that might need this. Oh, I know exactly who you're talking about. My company is struggling with this. They check you out, they can refer you to people. And yes, it's hard to quantify, but in my experience, the more I network, the more I meet people, the more I put myself out there, the easier it is for me to get referrals in organic traffic. For many years, I thought this was kind of like a waste of time or I should be working instead of doing this or going to parties or networking events or dinners. Then I realized this is business. This, this is what it's all about, is actually meeting people. And the funny thing about business is that it's a small world. And I'm sure anybody you meet anywhere is a few connections away from somebody else you want to connect to that they can introduce you to. And it could be more than just a sale. It could be an investor, it could be a partner, it could be a marketing affiliate. But you got to put yourself out there, meaning you miss all the shots you don't take. Right? You got to shoot some shots. You got to go to these events, you got to go to these dinners. You got to make it a priority to network. This episode is sponsored by Time Doctor. Measure and improve productivity wherever your people work. Let's pick up where we left off. Last week, I announced the rollout of Time Doctor to our whole team in our all hands meeting. We passed on Time Doctor's helpful guides and instructions and the whole team got started. Well, it's Been a week. What's happened? Well, the first step was they have all our team members join our team, activate their account, and install the software. Luckily, Time Doctor had our back. They shared with us some really great training materials that our managers in our team then passed on to their team members in their departments. It was pretty simple. Team members got an email to join our team, they set up their account, installed the software, and in less than two minutes, they were up and running. Now, as an administrator, I'm able to see who's using Time Doctor and who's not, and luckily everybody is on board now. It took a couple of gentle reminders to get people to install it and get started, but the setup is so simple that once they were reminded, they were up and running in no time. It's one week now, so we have some data and we can easily see where each team member is spending their time, where they're getting stuck, or maybe where they're spending a little bit too much time on certain tasks. Overall, the rollout's been pretty smooth and everybody's been pretty happy with it. The one thing I experienced as a user of Time Doctor is I just had to remember to pause and start my Time Doctor app or Time Doctor tracking when I took a break or when I ended my day of work. The great thing is, is that if you're idle for a bit and you come back and you forgot to pause it, Time Doctor asks you, were you on break or were you working? And it will retroactively adjust the tracking so that you could say, yep, I was on break. I just forgot. I really like that feature now. It's only been a week, but we've already started seeing team members being a lot more mindful about how they spend their time when they're working on different projects and tasks. I can't wait to see what we learn by next week when we build more momentum and have more data. If you want to join in on this experiment of helping you and your team become more productive, join Time Doctor today by starting a free trial and achieve up to 30% more productivity and unlock the power of visibility and accountability in your business, Visit the Time Doctor website at www.timedoctor.com to get started again. That's timedoctor.com all right, we're talking about five sales strategies that don't scale. We talked about sales calls, we talked about speaking at events, sales by chat and networking, parties, dinners, those types of things. Let's get to number five, and that's sponsoring events. Nicole and I have Sponsored several events over the course of the last eight years. So many events live in person events, online events, some events, three, four days, some of these events just a few hours. And my advice to people that are thinking about sponsoring events and they ask me, hey, is there an ROI on sales? Here is the answer. You got to do the math. Every business is different. You got to figure out how many sales will cover the cost of your sponsorship. Let me give you an example. The average customer at Webinar Ninja might spend around $1,000 a year on the software. We have different plans ranging from 290 a year all the way to $3,000 a year. But on average, let's say 1,000. Let's say for me to sponsor an in person event, it's going to cost me $5,000. But I also have to factor in hotel accommodations, supplies, my booth, all that kind of stuff. So let's say in total it's about $7,000. That means I need to secure seven customers to break even. My goal every time when I do this math is say I need to secure the minimum to break even at the event. Now what I get after the event, just by word of mouth, just by memory, just by branding and brand affinity, that's gravy. But I need to break even at the event at least. And if it makes sense to me, if I think I can secure that many people and I would ask questions to the event organizer, how many people are attending? Where is the sponsor booths located? Can I get some stage time? Can I speak about my product or service for 10 minutes on stage? This allows me to know I have a captive audience and ensure that I have some numbers to come up with some sort of conversion rate. I basically craft a deal that makes sense for me and my business. And if it's not there, we just don't do that event. But a lot of times the event organizer is willing to be flexible. This allows me not only to get sales from the attendees, but also build a relationship with the actual event or other businesses that are there. Meaning maybe we can become content partners, maybe we can become affiliate partners. Sales partners do partner webinars together. I'm trying to secure as many sales opportunities as possible when I'm in person with these people at the event. So I'm maximizing my sponsorship dollars that I'm spending. Now. Here's my advice when it comes to sponsoring events. Don't go halfway, go big or go home. Don't do this and just be another booth that looks exactly like the other booths. Or be a sponsor that's just like other other sponsors. Craft a deal and create an experience that makes you stand out. Wow, these people are amazing. These people are doing something different. This is fun. I like the speech they made on stage. Their booth is incredible. So, for example, we would do contests. We had a basketball hoop at our event where if they hit three shots in a row, they get a prize, like a physical prize. They could take home a webcam. We gave away gifts and swag they actually wanted. We created this promo video that was super fun and interesting and kind of funny actually, and displayed it to the crowd before a session. Something memorable. Something would make them like, wow, these people are cool. I'm going to check them out. You got to stand out. You got to make a splash. Don't just phone it in. Because when it comes to events, it's all about getting attention. If you become the buzz of the event, then your mission is accomplished. Well, there you have it, guys. Those are my five sales strategies that don't scale that I highly recommend. Let's recap real quick. Sales calls, speaking at events, sales by chat, networking events and dinners, and sponsoring an event. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, the best way to show your love to us is to share it with others on social media. Go ahead and share Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, whatever you want, but let the world know you listen to the hundred dollar MBA and send them over to100mba.net thanks in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Sales takes effort, but it takes more than that. It takes consistent effort. It doesn't work if you exert yourself for one week and do nothing for two weeks. You got to keep your foot on the gas. You got to keep doing these activities over and over and over and over until you start getting momentum and traction. This will motivate you to keep going. As you see the money coming in, you see customers coming in and you start learning, you start refining, getting better. Keep your foot on the gas. Don't stop. Because that's how you build momentum. That's how you build a company that has regular incoming sales. That's how you take activities that don't scale and turn them to things that do scale. When you start hiring, when you start automating, you start using software. You honed in what works and now you'll scale it up as you go. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in Tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.